Tidying for the Apocalypse
Sharon October 11th, 2008
Americans awakened yesterday morning with a unified, heartrending cry. It was “where the heck is Namibia, and how can I get my money in their banks!” The combination of American lack of geographical knowledge and the revelation that their banking system was considered less secure than that of 39 other countries, not excluding Namibia.
Meanwhile, more people are getting turned off by their electric and gas companies, job losses are up if you don’t count Texas, and Dow has lost 40% of its value over a year – much of it in the last month. Meanwhile, my blog has been strangely quiet about all of this.
What am I doing in this moment of crisis? Am I working to protect my assets by transferring them to Namibian banks? Building local food systems? Nope. The last few days have been taken over by four projects (besides Yom Kippur).
The first two were the long planned butchering of our meat birds for sale, and the purchase and barning of our winter’s hay and bedding. Then there was the purchase of more firewood, its delivery and beginning the stacking and moving process of all our wood under cover. The last, and really traumatic project was the sudden discovery that the New York Times wanted to send a photographer to my house.
Now you may have noticed that this blog doesn’t have pictures on it. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, while I recently did acquire a digital camera, uploading pictures on my dial up takes forever, and it isn’t something I have a lot of time to do. The second reason I don’t take a lot of pictures of my farm is that it is very much a working place, without a lot of attention to aesthetics. In fact, whenever I do interviews, and someone asks me how I get it all done, the standard answer is “I don’t do much housework.”
So let’s just say that having a New York Times photographer (from the Sunday Styles section, no less) at my house left me two choices. 1. Burn down the house and start again. 2. Ignore every project I have (many) and spend all days not devoted to Shabbos, Yom Kippur, butchering, barning or stacking (not many) frantically cleaning my house.
During the period when I was walking around hyperventilating and going “Oh (insert fairly uncreative swearing here)!” my step-mother suggested I should get one of those cleaning services that comes in after there’s been a flood, fire or bombing, but they weren’t available.
Meanwhile, we’ve also got guests for the weekend, so the six children in the house (four of mine, two of an old friend’s) are busily taking the house apart as fast as I can clean it. Oh, and did I mention that it is a mistake to buy chrysanthemums to make your steps look pretty and then leave them right next to the goat pen, where an extremely creative goat can get her lips through to rip them apart? I guess my walkway won’t be laden with seasonal flowers.
The photographer wants to take pictures of all the cute, funky things we do, including seeing me cook on a woodstove. Which will be lovely, and a waste of carbon, since I think it is supposed to be 70 tomorrow when they come. Oh, and as I explain the way we rely primarily on local food, I’ll be sending the kids out in the yard to eat pizza from the local take-out place (and while I haven’t enquired, I’m fairly sure they don’t use local flours and homemade mozzarella) so as to keep my house pristine (or as pristine as it is going to get). Strange how showing people how we don’t use energy doesn’t seem to be saving me any!
The good news is that if they can take suitable pictures, y’all might get to see the farm, and dressed up for company in the Sunday New York Times. The bad news is that I may need a week in bed, heavily sedated (is Gin officially a sedative?) to recover from the trauma.
After that, I should probably move all our assets to Namibia, but I’m not sure what the most efficient way to transfer our hard asssets – ie, goats, gin, hay and firewood – overseas is.
Cheers, and back soon,
Sharon
- humor
- Comments(55)
Hello Sharon:
It sure is, esp. with tonic and lime.
Cheers
Debbie
I’m partial to a certain homebrew my hubby has made myself.
As to the house work…well you don’t want it too pristine. Just simply say that with all the hard work of gardening, canning, animal husbandry,homeschooling, writing,wood stacking that you have to prioritize. The house takes a hit this time of year.
( I say as I notice that the enormous spider web encircling the also plant captures some end of season fruit flies}.Remember ecoystem!
Sharon I just hyperventilate about housework. I never get it right. You have done a lot more than housework and if your family is healthy and happy I think you have done very well.
Oh I can so relate, in the early 90′s we had a Japanese t.v. show come to our home and film us doing things like milking goats, spinning wool etc, and I was in a panic the week before getting the house ready to be on Japanese TV. It was so much fun though…enjoy the moment !
Housework? We just don’t invite anyone over . . . there’s no place to sit, anyway, because what used to be the living room is full of stored food, a freezer (there was nowhere else to put it) with cats sleeping on top of it, and boxes of canning jars, full and not full *yet* (well, I suppose we could sit on buckets); we only have four kitchen chairs anyway and two of them are in the ‘library’ (i.e., room full of books—on shelves, floor and aforementioned chairs);and I’d rather sew or read or be outside than clean house anyhow.
Fortunately—unlike the rest of both our families—we have pretty low standards. So we stay here and wallow happily in our amiable disarray, they don’t visit and thus don’t suffer heart attacks, and everyone’s as happy as can be expected (except the goats, who are convinced that if we really loved them we’d let them come in the house with the cats).
Great story, I’d love to see the pictures!
I can’t wait to see the article. I hope you’ll post a link to it if there is one.
I’m the world’s worst housekeeper. There are about a million things I’d rather be doing. Lucky me, I married a clean freak who works nights. So when I get home from work, it’s almost like the brownies have come and picked everything up. Magic!
Shaunta
http://www.shauntagrimes.com
My inbox is FULL of educational material about how to transfer my money into Namibian bank accounts. Unfortunately, all those bank accounts belong to other people. Given the current world political etc. and the etc.onomic downturn etc. etc., I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before I begin receiving instructions on how to send my real assets to Namibian banks. Some will call me old-fashioned, others late to the party, but now I’m finding it more expedient to transfer my dollars into an account in superpails in my storeroom that just yields beans for interest.
I’m pretty sure Orlov would say that the ideal way to transfer your hard assets to Namibia would be in your own private boat, but that probably calls for some advance planning…like, say, knowing how to sail.
When it comes to housecleaning, we are, as I told my mother this evening, “six feet under and sinking”. If I got a call saying someone wanted to photograph my house, I think my first reaction upon hanging up would be a few good primal screams–and then I’d call the neighbors to ditch the kid for a while. Good luck!! And I do hope we get to see pictures.
of course you could have said no. (citing privacy and security concerns)
Sharon:
Do you know when you will be appearing in the New York Times?
I can’t wait to see the photographs of your farm and the manifestion of all of your hard work.
Congratulations!
Sharon:
Do you know when you will be appearing in the New York Times?
I can’t wait to see the photographs and the manifestation of all of your hard work.
Congratulations!
Oh my. Congratulations!
My house isn’t exactly a disaster, but let’s just say it will never be model clean unless brownines are real and I can entice them in. I’d leave milk out but the cats would get it.
Housework…ummm. I do admit to making the bed (mostly because its in the living room). I think I know where the vacuum cleaner is. Spiders are great for controlling other bugs. Dust? What dust… its no worse than it was last week
And people photograph our house every day of the week multiple times. We even made the wikipedia. World’s Steepest Street. We own the one with the white picket fence and lacework veranda.
viv in nz
Sharon,
This is only the second comment I have left on your blog, and I apologize that both comments have been critical. Please note that my comments are in the spirit of critique and not mere criticism.
I can understand both the thrill of being an interview subject of the New York Times and the value of “getting the message out,” via such a huge media outlet. However, I do not understand how you could agree to do an interview/photoshoot with the New York Times *Style* section. I would think that given your obvious love of words and ideas that you would adequately grasp the symbolic meaning of such an interview. Your chosen way of life is not a hot pair of pumps, the “in” hand bag, or a night out at the hippest restaurant. It seems to me to be a very serious and sincere response to your analysis of the current and likely future state of things. To reduce it to a lifestyle accessory is to mock it, to deride it, and to make of it a frivolous bit of capitalist kitsch.
What you should have said is, “Sorry, no thanks. They way we live is not a matter of the caprice and whimsy of style, it is a matter of substance deeply rooted in the material and socio-cultural and political realities of the world.” Then you should have blogged about why you said no to an interview/photoshoot with the Style section of the New York Times.
Sharon- Just look ‘em in the eye and repeat ” this isn’t just a house; it’s an ecosytem”!
I can relate though- the local paper(hey- I don’t rate the NY Times) recently sent a photographer out here to shoot some photos for an article on growing grain- came out really nice actually- so I know you’ll be fine. They’ll just figure you’re quaint or something- hope they don’t show up wearing pantyhose and heels though(and that’s just the guys! ;0 )
Oh, please post a link to the interview! I don’t think I can get hold on a copy of NYT in my part of the world (unless I go to the nearest big city, which I generally avoid
)
Christina
somewhere in the woods, Sweden
So good to get you back on the blog! I have missed your thoughts and wisdom this week. Let us know when that piece will be printed in the NYT. I am glad you are doing it because you set a fantastic example. Most people, however, will not get at all the pioneering life and work you do (and I don’t mean literally pioneering!). You are one of the greatest thinkers in America and I am afraid that the NYT won’t do you justice.
Well, I get laughed at too– just on a smaller scale (my family and friends who don’t get it). I applaud you an can’t wait to see the piece.
Karen Fremerman
(still in Wash DC for a couple more years)
I think it’s just in our nature to want the world (or at least our parents) to see a splendidly clean and dust free house. Having said that, I haven’t had a splendidly clean and dust free house since….well, since I moved out of my mom’s house 14 years ago.
Good luck and best wishes….can’t wait to read the article.
Andrea
Brownies will be happy with offerings of sweets or whiskey, along with the traditional dairy products. OTOH, I can’t vouch for the cats not eating the brownies… (for any other Pagans out there, I suggest leaving milk/cream offerings for the house spirits in the fireplace when you aren’t using it, protected from the cats by the fireplace screen).
Of course, my son brings home the NYT every weekday, as it’s offered free at his college, but we don’t get it weekends. So, yes, please post links and pics!
Fer
Can’t wait to read the article. And you can consider yourself SETTING the new Style standards, not falling victim to others’ expectations. (But I do agree that clean in this case is good…)
Please post the date ahead of time if you can, so I can go to the local Starbucks and buy my copy.
Lisa in MN
Oh, I have missed your writing as much as usual the past week, Sharon! But this is a nice read this morning.
I think that anyway you get to speak about your way of life is legitimate. It is pretty interesting that New York Style wants to do the story! preparation for the way we’ll have to live frugally and without so much energy??? There is a lot of thinking about how we can leanr to be frugal, because it’s IN now.
Good luck with the piece,
cheers,
Shamba
How could one generation go so wrong? Evidently, the leaders in my generation of elders wish to live without having to accept limits to growth of seemingly endless economic globalization, increasing per capita consumption, and skyrocketing human population numbers; our desires are insatiable. We choose to believe anything that is politically convenient, economically expedient and socially agreeable; our way of life is not negotiable. We dare anyone to question our values or behaviors. We religiously promote our widely shared and consensually-validated fantasies of ‘real’ endless economic growth and soon to become unsustainable overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities, and in so doing deny that Earth has limited resources and frangible ecosystems upon which the survival of life as we know it and the success of any manmade economy depend. My not-so-great generation appears to be doing a disservice to everything and everyone but ourselves.
Never in the course of human events have so few members of a single generation stolen, consumed and hoarded so much wealth at the expense of so many other people. We have mortgaged the future of our own children. We are the “what’s in it for me generation”. We demonstrate precious little regard for the maintenance of the integrity of Earth; shallow willingness to actually protect the environment from crippling degradation; lack of serious consideration for the preservation of biodiversity, wilderness, and a good enough future for our children and coming generations; and no appreciation of the vital understanding that humans are no more or less than magnificent living beings with “feet of clay”.
Perhaps my not-so-great does live in unsustainable ways in our planetary home; but we are proud of it nonetheless. Certainly, we will “have our cake and eat it, too.” We own fleets of cars, fly around in thousands of private jets, live in McMansions, exchange secret handshakes, frequent exclusive clubs and distant hideouts, and risk nothing of value to us. We will live long, large and free. Please do not bother us with the problems of the world. We choose not to hear, see or speak of them. Remember, silence is golden. We are the economic powerbrokers, their bought-and-paid-for politicians and the many minions in the mass media. We hold the much of the world’s wealth and the extraordinary power great wealth purchases. If left to our own devices, we will continue in the exercise of our ‘inalienable rights’ to outrageously consume Earth’s limited resources; to recklessly expand economic globalization unto every corner of our natural world and, guess what, beyond; and to carelessly consent to the unbridled global growth of human numbers so that where there are now 6+ billion people, by 2050 we will have 9+ billion members of the human community and, guess what, even more people, perhaps billions more in the distant future, if that is what we desire. We never lie but also never tell the truth as we see it. The “thing” that matters most of all to us is “the only game in town”. We are the reigning, self-proclaimed masters of the universe. We enjoy freedom and living without limits; of course, we adamantly eschew any talk of the personal responsibilities that come with the exercise of personal freedoms and any discussion of the existence of biophysical limitations a finite planet naturally imposes.
We deny the existence of human limits and Earth’s limitations. Please understand that we do not want anyone presenting us with scientific evidence that we could be living unsustainably in an artificially designed, temporary world of our own making….a manmade world filling up with gigantic enterprises, virtual mountains of material possessions, and boundless amounts of filthy lucre. Most of our top rank experts appear not to have found adequate ways of communicating to the family of humanity what people somehow need to hear, see and understand: the rapacious dissipation of Earth’s limited resources, the relentless degradation of the planet’s environment, and the approaching destruction of the Earth as a fit place for human habitation by the human species, when taken together, appear to be proceeding at breakneck speed toward the precipitation of a catastrophic ecological wreckage of some sort unless, of course, the world’s colossal, ever expanding, artificially designed, manmade global political economy continues to speed headlong toward the monolithic ‘wall’ called “unsustainability” at which point the runaway economy crashes before Earth’s ecology is collapsed. Who knows, perhaps we can realistically and hopefully hold onto the expectation that behavioral changes in the direction of sustainable production, per human consumption, and propagation are in the offing…..changes that save the global economy, life as we know it and Earth’s body.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php
*Chuckle* Best of luck with the photo-shoot Sharon. Hoping you a quick recovery not requiring too much “sedative”.
*Chuckle* Best of luck with the photo-shoot Sharon. Wishing you a quick recovery not requiring too much “sedative”.
After harvest I too want “one of those cleaning services that comes in after there’s been a flood, fire or bombing” because that what our house looks like its been through.
Good luck with the interview and show them what sustainable style is!
Sharon, we’re all on your side. That’s so exciting!
Also, I find Flylady’s crisis cleaning directions (or, how to clean for company without making the cupboards & closets worse for later) really helpful: http://www.flylady.net/pages/FlyingLessons_crisiscleaning.asp. Sometimes the timer can get the kids involved too – we play a game called “Race Mommy!” where I spend 15 minutes dredging the kitchen counters and my 3 year old spends 15 minutes finding all the toys & apple cores that are at his level (below the countertop). We have a lot of open shelving, so he usually “wins” that one.
I have not been crisis cleaning, but I’m trying to get back on the Flylady bandwagon (even though it’s still canning season, I’m done canning – no stove this last week and into the foreseeable future) because now that we’re in the first steps of volunteering to be a host family I’m thinking lots of teenagers would rather be homeless than live with our mess.
To Bob Cole – if you watch the style section you’ll see that notable women often make it in there regardless of what they’re doing (partly because it used to be the “Women’s Section” of most newspapers), and that it’s also where the Times sticks most of urban farming & local food stuff they run (hmmm, what does that say about their view of farmers?)
Hooray for you (and sympathetic horrors on the housework). When we lived in our tidy little home in suburbia, we had far, far fewer visitors than we do now that we live in the sticks, and have chicken poop on our front deck year round. Ah well. They’ll take pictures of the pretty stuff–closeups of jeweled canned goods and goats. (That’s what happened when I was covered by our local little paper for something on sustainable agriculture). I think it’s great that you’ll be appearing in the Style section. Plenty of Serious Folks read the Style section of the paper. I know I do, and I don’t really think of myself as a frivolous person. And I’m thinking you’re part of a New Homesteading movement–make it fashionable! Make it fun! Appeal to the frivolous AND the serious.
Jill
Thanks for the story. My wife hyperventilates over housework when her mom comes because if we don’t clean up things, her mom will try to do it, and she is too old to keep up that kind of work.
Otherwise, when people come to see the farm or what I do, they are treated to the piles of junk and parts that comprise my entropic nightmare of saving the world.
You are welcome to visit and feel better.
Pizza Hut already has the oven running, so why would you fire up another stove just to feed 6 kids?
P.S. If the reporters want to see something amazing and vegan, they should visit NextStepProduce in Maryland.
I live in the first New Deal community founded by Eleanor Roosevelt during the Great Depression to relieve the suffering of destitute coal miners and their families. My friend Annabelle who is in her late 80s now, tells of the Saturday when she was in the basement cleaning up. Later that day the graduation of the first class would be celebrated. She was dirty, with bare feet and cobwebs in her hair, when she heard a familiar high-pitched voice. She hid behind the opening door to the pantry just as Mrs. Roosevelt, followed by the New York press (maybe the Times) said “And tell me Mrs. ______, how many quarts of green beans have you put up this summer.” Annabelle stayed right behind the door until she heard no more talking, then went upstair to clean up for graduation!! Nothing changes.
Hi, Sharon;
Pardon, but I’ve no patience for going without photos on your site any longer. I figured all this time that you had no camera.
Being on modem has nothing to do with uploading pictures slowly. You’re uploading them wrong if they don’t go up just about instantly.
And denying yourself — and we Gentle Readers — some pictures we’d all enjoy a great deal.
The concept is simple — pictures on the Web are optimized first, which is the click of one button. Computer monitors are incapable of displaying more than a minimal collection of pixels, so there is no value or use in uploading directly from your camera to the web. Most pictures on the web are tiny in actual size — 20K up to 100K. Even a Sl-o-o-o-w modem will upload them in 20 seconds.
Beginners upload their camera shots as is — without ‘saving for the web’ (optimizing) first — and those originals are 1 meg, 2 meg, or way more, because they are optimized for finely detailed photo shop printing. But a 2 meg photo off your camera, when optimized for the web, strips out 95% of the pixel weight without losing any quality (as far as a computer monitor can represent). The optimized photo will be about 90k, and upload in seconds.
If you email me as to which photo manipulation program you use, I will spell out the one or two clicks that will let you instantly optimize your photos, and upload them as casually as you’d butter your toast in the morning.
So we can see what you’re talking about, and be part of the family.
Regards,
Selva
I agree that you need more pictures on your blog. I look forward to reading the article and seeing what they decided to photograph. I doubt anyone would be able to tell that the wood cook stove was not even lit when a picture of you pretending to cook on it was taken. No use of carbon needed. Have fun.
Cindy in FL
I love your blog just the way it is Sharon. I have dial up too, and it is not fast to load photos, even optimized. I know, I write very long illustrated reports that may have as many as 150 photos in the text, and these may take 4 or 5 hours to send to clients. Often I am only getting around 26 kbps.
Plus the damn blogs with photos take forever to load. Your writing carries the day, screw the photos. I vote no to pixelation.
As to the Style nature of your life: you and Crunchy are the Style babes that I read. My house and my office are way past Mess headed for Trainwreck, and while I do not have visitors in my home {they might die of the shock} they do come to my office day and night.
I simply take them out back to the tree nursery right away and that is the impression they are left with. I hope.
Try my tactic. Present the place selectively, and {I am a professional photog} offer that this here little view is the most photogenic, and that goat over there is the cutest, and this kid {your kid, not the goat} looks the most like Paul Newman, and so on. “Lovely light on the avocados over there, no?”.
Attempt to lead them quickly past the criminal investigation type rooms of your house.
Good luck, and I am dying to see your Stylish visage in the Times paean. Let the Times publish those new-fangled photos. Their text needs the help, yours does not.
[...] Casaubon’s Book » Blog Archive » Tidying for the Apocalypse Americans awakened yesterday morning with a unified, heartrending cry. It was “where the heck is Namibia, and how can I get my money in their banks!” The combination of American lack of geographical knowledge and the revelation that their banking system was considered less secure than that of 39 other countries, not excluding Namibia. [...]
Thanks for the head’s up. I’ll be on the lookout for you in the Styles section. I do believe I would have shat my pants in excitement otherwise. Now, I can fortify my breeches in anticipation.
congratulations, Sharon:)))
I vote no to the pics in the blog- with dial-up pics are a total pain- anyone who says otherwise mustn’t have dial-up……. besides- I read the blog to read it!
Yep. The best thing you can do is keep on keeping on. Let the crazy stuff happen – and prepare just as you always have
The economy is saved, now how about turning attention and financial resources to saving the Earth from a meltdown?
It looks as if the Wonder Boys on Wall Street, who caused the current disaster in the world’s financial system, are going to rescue the family of humanity from a meltdown of the global economy.
Is it too much to ask some of these multi-billionaires to provide wealth to save the world from the global “meltdown” of Earth’s ice pack that is occurring in Greenland, Antarctica, the high mountain ranges from the Arctic Cordillera, to the Andes to the Himalayas?
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php
CB, I live right near Arthurdale (and actually in the Scott’s Run community that inspired it)!
Yay, neighbors!
Oh no, I can’t have anyone in until canning season is over. I took some time to do a little housework after my canning neighbor made a comment – she’s pretty tolerant. DD14 even vaccumed without complaint – guess she thought it needed it.
I have had a good laugh over this one. I’d never have a photographer here, however.
Oh my goodness! Good luck with all that and try to remember that most of us won’t know the difference from clean or not in a photograph. And a cluttered room is much more interesting than something tidy and sterile. I’ll be looking for you!
Sharon
Don’t worry you’ll do fine! But I will be looking for that picture AND I am sure you will look fabulous. My worry when I am in the papers is always that they will choose the most outrageously awful pic of me. They’ve never let me down yet and I sure you will look fabulous — especially considering that it is a much more widely circulated paper than I have ever been in! And remember—the dirt never shows in the pictures. Really!!
Look at it this way, at least your kids and your dog aren’t vomiting all over your house! That would be way worse!
Sharon, good luck with the photo shoot — I’m sure it’ll turn out great!
Mr. Salmony, I’ll thank you to Not speak for the entirety of the ‘boomer’ generation. I’m rather tired of people who do that, quite frankly.
Can’t wait to hear how it went! Been thinking about you today…Lisa in MN
If you take your sedative with tonic water, you will also be curing yourself of malaria, maybe…and that would be multi-tasking.
Taking the bait! And The LIE is swallowed, hook, line and sinker ;-(
Steve wrote: “When I talk about people buying or being sold ‘absolute crap’ I’m not only talking about the material but also about the ideological. We are ’sold’ on consumerism, the wars (Iraq), elections (the presidency), all manner of things. Unfortunately, so few people see that just because these ideas are on sale, that they don’t actually have to buy them!”
Sadly, the multitudes have sold out ;-(
The multitudes have taken the bait which is “ease of life”, so-called, and The LIE was swallowed(believed),
hook(money),
line(education/religion),
and sinker(technology) ;-(
This place they call the u.s. of a. is the “bait”master and they catch their “fish” in every nation of this world ;-( Yet in england, france, germany, japan, etc, in all nations of this wicked world, there are those who have become disciples of the “bait”master and they also have found other “waters” in which to catch their “fish” ;-(
And so it is that today there are multitudes in every nation under the sun that have taken the bait(ease of life), and swallowed(believed) the hook(money), the line(education/religion) and the sinker(technology) ;-(
Tempted, hooked, reeled in, and held captive as they but serve “time” in the prison that is this wicked world ;-(
Simply, they could not withstand the media blitz(krieg), and their “imag”ination got the best of them ;-(
Some two thousand years past The Truth bore witness to the fact that, “the WHOLE world is under the control of the evil one”! (1John5:19) Yet, the “fish” continue to seek out that “good” place in the world, when in Truth the world today is but the product of mankind’s “imag”ination, a dry and thirsty land of mirages, nothing but shadows ;-(
And in this wicked world, “image”s abound and are worshipped ;-(
So why receive that which is of mankind’s “imag”ination?
Even when such is supposedly “free” there will always be a price to pay, for mankind’s “imag”ination is destroying and perverting that which is of Creation(land, air, water, creatures, vegetation, Light, Life, Truth, Love, Peace, Hope, Grace, Faith, etc.) ;-(
Consider the time when there were no radio’s, no tv’s, no movies, no newspapers, a time when there was no way yet “imag”ined and then manufactured, that would allow someone to publish or display the vain “imag”inations of mankind to the “masses”. Sadly those who rule in this wicked world, and who control the “media”, consider the “masses” to be but the M in E=MC(squared);-(
And yet today, here i am publishing(sharing) that which i believe to be from the heart, The Spirit within, not the vain “imag”inations of my fleshly mind. i can but hope that which i share is from The ONE whose voice i have heard and whose Power i have experienced in The Miracles of deliverance that set me free, free from the “I” in me!
The ONE who revealed the lies that are of this world, it’s ‘god’, and it’s systems of religion, as i received evermore “a love of The Truth”. The ONE WHOM i know and believe is the Giver of Life, The Only True GOD and Father(Creator) of ALL!
Father Help! and HE does…….
Do you feel as i feel? Do you wonder just what’s real?
Do you see the little child? Do you see them running wild?
i see their doubts and i see their fears, i see their hurts and i see their tears.
Now could be that’s what i look to see, Yet what i see is real to me.
Now am i alone to care and cry? Or must i close these eyes and surely die?
Sadly, the children, or those who once were called children, today are referred to as “kids” ;-(
Sadder yet, the reference is true ;-(
Baby goats abound because their ‘parents’ feed them all sorts of “trash”, and so it is that as they grow, they “eat” any and all things, no matter the dis-eases(no-peace) that causes them to be pill pushers, peer pleasers, or worse yet slaves of the media ;-(
“Where have all the children gone? long time pa-as-sing” ;-(
Progress? Yes things are getting progressively worse and worse ;-(
The Hopi people of AZ once believed “A Simple and Spiritual Life is the only Life that will survive”.
Sadly, not long ago, it seems the last “hostile” Hopi, “hostile” meaning against “progress” so-called! The last “hostile” Hopi passed away a short time ago, and the remaining hopi, remain in name only, for they have given up and given in to “progress” ;-( Hope is there are yet hopi who still believe they will once again “see” their “True White Brother”, Whom i believe to be The Messiah.
Thankfully Hope IS Alive!
For Miracles do happen!
Hope is there would be those who would take heed unto The Call of Our Father(Creator) and “Come Out” of this wicked world and it’s systems of religion, for they will no longer have their portion with those who are destroying and perverting that which is of Creation(land, air, water, creatures, vegetation, Light, Truth, Love, Peace, Hope, Grace, Faith, etc.)!
And for those who have embraced “mother earth”?
Hope is they would also experience ONEness as they embrace Their Father, The Only True GOD(Great Spirit), HE WHO is Creator(Father) of ALL!
Peace, in spite of the dis-ease(no-peace) that is of this wicked world and it’s systems of religion, for “the WHOLE world is under the control of the evil one”(1John5:19) indeed and Truth…….
Truth is never ending…….
The financial meltdown is not over! Just take a look at the huge amount of money. pumped into the United States, European and other economies. The United States dollar is not backed with anything except the cost of hope, printing, paper, ink and such. Plus borrowed money is used to finance the bailout. All too soon, the United States will have more trouble paying interest just on the borrowed monies we owe. The good may be here but we can’t afford them.
In looking at the Market Crash of 1929 time line. The Market values came up, investments were made and then the bottom really fell out. Caution!
I too am concerned about the baby boomer group identification. If there has been one common factor, it is that we’re a very diverse group.
Sharon, just getting to this. Wish I were closer, I’d come help you with whatever!!! Am glad you are doing this. It’s important for others to see that it is possible to live sustainably. And whether or not your house is clean, you are still a good role model. You keep on keeping on girlfriend. Here’s sending you good wishes and great thoughts. (Can’t wait to read the article).
Gracie